The evening world., 1887-12-03

Union Dy "utCu noW tue Fouotet ana
the Conspmer Would Profit n ILttie.
The spectacle Of the co&s peddlers accus-
ing the dealers of giving Snort weight and
making extortionate charges suggests the
parallel Of the proverbial kettle calling the
pot black.
Poor people in the tenement house dis
tricts who find it difficult to keep q fire in
the range this cold weather are indeed moro
apt to blame the small dealer than he whole
sale man, and to accuse the former q Shaking
the biggest profit.
The coal peddler, properly so callets is, Of
course, an itinerant. but the small storkeep-
ers who have a wooden box or bin Oh the
sidewalk, and sell by the basket or buhel,
are included in the category. =
II is a business which caters to the wants
of the very poorest people, whose necessits
compels them to buy their supplies in smelL
quantities at a time. If the dealers are to be
believed the ped iI lot Is a c1mParanve hy
summer time and only goes into the coal bust
ness when winter sets in and coal becomes lit
orally q " black diamond" He gets his sup
ply by the half ton or ton from the East and
North rivers, where he is allowed 80 cents
per ton off the price to private consumers.
the ton, but he does not sell by weight. He
uses the beautifully indefinite measure Of
Curiously enough the "bushel basket" Is
supposed to hold only half a bushel, but IL
never contains its normal quantity. When
the basket is at its biggest and best, 1t must
be filled seventy-fve times to get AVA with
q ton of coal, and in most cases 1t contains
only fifteen or twenty pounds,
The usual price to the poor people who buy
from the carts is II cents per basket or "a
-a-Aa 4. rah Ahnn . Ahn n
reaps a fair harvest. He can get coal to-day
at the yards at from S. 80 to $5.75 per ton Of
1900 pounds, which by. basket sales yields
him from $s,25 to $11. A peddler with q fair
that he has a fair sum left after paying for the
hire of his horse and cart and the keep Of the
animal.
This is the bright side of the picture but
the coal peddlers have their grievances the
same as other laboring men. In the first
place the business is rapidly becoming over
crowded. President McShane, Of the East
Side Coal Peddlers' Protective Association,
men engaged in this line, and he says it has
become the custom for laborers driven from
their work by the advance of cold weather to
get hold of a ramshackle cart and q broken
down horse, buy a few hundred pounds OF
coal INT enter into competition with the
Then the peddlers complain thai they are
not given right weight for their money:
Their ton is mostly only 1900 pounds and
when they complain they are told that II they
don't like it they can leave it. Indeed, some
dealers refuse to sell to peddlers at all. They
have to pay cash for their coal before they
leave the yard, but after carrying it in bas-
kets to the top floors of high tenement build
ings, they often have to give their customers
credit till the end of the week and not in
frequently incur bad debts.
The burning grievance of the peddlers Is,
however, that their profits get less and less
with every increase in the price made by the
coal barons. They complain that the price
is raised at an hours notice, and they can get
no more than Is cents a bushel. even when
the price at the yard scars rs high as 81.
TIL peddlers have recently organized. and
have resolved to club together and establish
cooperative ~coal-yards, thus getting their
supplies direct from the mines.
The Peddlers' Association promises to
adopt q standard measure which it will insist
upon all of its members using unde penalty
Of expulsion and boycott.
|. Thus out of the q~uarrels between the
peddlers and the coal dealers the much-tried
consumer may derive ultimate benefit.